Help:IPA for English
Throughout Wikipedia, the pronunciations of English words are conveyed by means of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA); for a basic introduction to IPA, see . In particular, the following tables list the relevant transcription for various English diaphonemes; for a more complete key, see , which includes sounds that do not occur in English. (If the IPA symbols are not displayed properly by your browser, then see the links at the bottom of this page.) If you feel it is necessary to add a pronunciation respelling using another convention, then please use the conventions of Wikipedia's pronunciation respelling key. * To compare the following IPA symbols with non-IPA American dictionary conventions that may be more familiar, see pronunciation respelling for English, which lists the pronunciation guides of fourteen English dictionaries published in the United States. * To compare the following IPA symbols with other IPA conventions that may be more familiar, see , which lists the conventions of eight English dictionaries published in Britain, Australia, and the United States. Dialect variations This key accommodates standard General American, Received Pronunciation, Canadian English, South African English, Australian English, and New Zealand English pronunciations. Therefore, not all of the distinctions shown here are relevant to a particular dialect: * If, for example, you pronounce cot and caught the same, then you may simply ignore the difference between the symbols and , just as you ignore the distinction between the written vowels o'' and ''au when pronouncing them. * In many dialects, occurs only before a vowel; if you speak such a dialect, simply ignore in the pronunciation guides where you would not pronounce it, as in cart . * In other dialects, ('y'es) cannot occur after , etc., within the same syllable; if you speak such a dialect, then ignore the in transcriptions such as new . For example, New York is transcribed . For most people from England and for some New Yorkers, the in is not pronounced (and may instead rhotacise the preceding vowel); for most people from the United States, including some New Yorkers, the in is not pronounced and may be ignored. On the other hand, there are some distinctions which you might make but which this key does not encode, as they are seldom reflected in the dictionaries used as sources for Wikipedia articles: * The difference between the vowels of fir, fur and fern in Scottish and Irish English. * The difference between the vowels of "pain" and "pane" in some British, Welsh, and Newfoundland dialects. * The vowels of bad and had in many parts of Australia and the Eastern United States. * The vowels of spider and spied her in some parts of Scotland and North America. Other words may have different vowels depending on the speaker. Bath, for example, originally had the vowel (as in cat), but for many speakers, it now has the vowel (as in father). Such words are transcribed twice, once for each pronunciation: . For more extensive information on dialect variations, you may wish to see the IPA chart for English dialects. Key Note: The IPA stress mark ( ) comes ''before the syllable that has the stress, in contrast to stress marking in pronunciation keys of some dictionaries published in the United States.'' (Words in are the standard lexical sets. Words in the lexical sets and are given two transcriptions, respectively one with and one with , and with and ). | valign="top" | |} See also * If your browser does not display IPA symbols, you probably need to install a font that includes the IPA. Good free IPA fonts include Gentium and Charis SIL (more complete); a monospaced font is Everson Mono which is complete; download links can be found on those pages. * For a guide to adding pronunciations to Wikipedia articles, see the template. * For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see the Wikipedia Manual of Style. * Wikipedia:Pronunciation respelling key Notes External links * Getting JAWS 6.1 to recognize "exotic" Unicode symbols—For help on getting the screen reader JAWS to read IPA symbols * IPA TTS (text-to-speech) bookmarklet